Reading Circle Calendar

Book Of The Month To Make You Think

About Me

is a talk show host appearing weekly on Northern New Jersey's WP88.7 FM. He is the host of THE READING CIRCLE with Marc Medley which is aired every Saturday morning from 6:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m. It can be heard worldwide by webstreaming www.gobrave.org. The program is solely dedicated to increasing and enhancing listener's interest in reading. During the show, listeners experience the best in autobiographies, biographies, self-help books, and literary classics. In many instances authors are interviewed live on the air. If you are an author who is interested in appearing on THE READING CIRCLE w/Marc Medley, email thereadingcircle01@yahoo.com or www.thereadingcircle01.com

Saturday, September 22, 2012

Too Many of Us Have Become Mental and Spiritual Garbage Trucks

It
has been a little while since I posted to The Critical Thinker, however in
light of this Kate Middleton mess I could not help but to write a post.
Critical thinkers it has taken me a while to put this post together because I
really could not decide what approach to take because there were so many
different angles and approaches swirling in my head. So many things came to
mind such as the notions of being star struck with celebrities, the
ridiculousness of most (if not all) “reality” TV shows, how we continuously
feed into and give power to the “paparazzi” by purchasing the magazines and
newspapers who publish their intrusive photos to why are we so interested in
bad news and what goes on in other people’s lives? All of the concepts swirled for a few days.

I even gave some serious
thought in terms of what this post would be titled and because most of what
I've described above in my opinion is mental and spiritual trash, I came up with
the title Too Many of Us Have Become Mental and Spiritual Garbage Trucks. Now
I'm sure for many of you critical thinkers reading this, the thought of being
compared with a garbage truck is not a flattering thought, however, upon doing
the research for this post I came across a YouTube video that is actually
titled Types of “Garbage Truck” and in that video it shows various types of
garbage trucks such as the Automatic Side Loader (ASL), Container Delivery (CD)
and Front Loader (FL). After viewing
this clip, it dawned on me that too many of us have allowed ourselves to become
mental garbage trucks. In my opinion, being star struck with
celebrities, reality TV shows and the power given to the paparazzi by us fall
into the category of mental garbage. Trash
is always placed into something whether it is a can, a truck, or a dump; trash
is always put into something hence the simile of us being mental garbage
trucks. Why does a magazine publisher
feel the need to publish photos of Kate Middleton’s breasts? Why do we care? Why
are we even caught up with breasts to begin with? Yet, every day we load mental
trash like this into our minds, bodies, and spirits like our sanitation workers
load trash into a garbage truck. If we would stop supporting the magazines and
newspapers that purchase pictures from the paparazzi, the paparazzi would cease
to exist. The same holds true for the constant bombardment of bad/negative news in newspapers
and on television; good/positive news would be reported if that is what we as a world truly wanted reported. Noted author Marianne Williamson says “Today's newspaper
is just a reflection of yesterday's thoughts.” In other words we keep getting
what we are getting because that is what we collectively think about…. bad
news. Blogger Joel Gascoigne in a recent
post titled The Power of Ignoring Mainstream News hits upon this same point
when he states:

“Around 2 years ago I stopped reading and watching mainstream news. I
don’t read a single newspaper, offline or online, and I don’t watch any TV at
all. I recently mentioned this onTwitterandFacebookand it created a lot of discussion, so
I wanted to expand on my thoughts and experiences. When I first started
ignoring news, I felt that I was simply making an excuse, that if I had more
time Ishouldread the news. Today, however, it is a very
deliberate choice and I feel consistently happier every single day due to
ignoring the mainstream news. It just so happens that the last 2 years have
also been the most enjoyable and productive of my entire life, and have
contained some of my greatest achievements.”

Why
are we constantly looking for something negative to read about, hear about, or
say about someone else? It is beyond me why we are so determined to focus on
what is going wrong in someone else's life compared with being focused on what
is happening in our own lives. Maybe that's the problem. Too many of us feel
the need to have someone else's life be crappier than ours in order to make us
feel good about ourselves. First we fawn all over them [celebrities], “Oh I can’t believe
he/she shook my hand,” “ he/she gave me an autograph,” “ he/she took a picture with me,” or “I’ll
never wash this hand again,” and then we
look to read all of the dirt (trash) about them that we can find. Newsflash!! Celebrities
are human beings just like the rest of us, and yes, Kate Middleton has breasts just
like any other woman and in the European countries women sunbathe topless. When is the madness going to end? Speaking of madness; this whole notion of “reality" TV (which I also consider garbage)
mystifies me. Is there anyone on the planet who does not have enough reality of
their own? Yet, the website Reality TV
World lists over one thousand reality TV shows in alphabetical order on its site
http://www.realitytvworld.com/realitytvworld/allshows.shtml. Again, I guess we have to escape our own reality and be lost in someone else's. Ridiculous.

There
is an old saying “Garbage In – Garbage Out.” In other words what you put in is
what you get out. Could that be the reason that we are constantly besieged by
all of the negative things that we are constantly besieged with during our
newscasts and in our newspapers? Could all of the negativity be a result or
manifestation of us allowing too much garbage into our minds, bodies and
spirits thereby causing this same garbage to come back out? Think about the
garbage we take in on a collective basis and how much garbage that must be
going out on that same collective basis. Maybe author Marianne Williamson is onto to
something when she said “Today’s newspaper is just a reflection of yesterday’s
thoughts.” Something to critically think about…….. As always, I welcome your response in the
commentary section of this blog and feel free to follow me on Twitter
@thinkcritical01.